Squab is better than any drug, some sex

LaDawn got successfully petitioned to strip the Confederate flag from her Antelope Valley high school mascot after getting graduation announcements with the stars and bars. "I'm not sending that to my grandma!" she says. "Are you out of your fucking mind!" After two death threats, the NAACP thought she needed a security escort to work.

And Rosy—from the outer desert, just like the rest—says she was the hermit, from preschool-era Disco-Duck sing-alongs for her parents to playing guitar in her room in high school.

It was some serious destiny that put them together. Here's proof: LaDawn went to a march in 1993, like years before she'd even see the then-three-piece Squab at a queer women-of-color conference at Cal State Long Beach—Squab would then and will still play anywhere anyone asks them to, if they're down for the cause. And at the march, she took a picture, and front-and-center in the picture is Rosy, looking right into the camera like she's one of LaDawn's best friends. ("We were like, 'WHOA!'" crows LaDawn.)

"We've been trying to find ourselves, and now we have," says Tracy. "So it's like . . . go nuts!" she adds. They've been through the heatflash shock of playing their best show ever—for hundreds of newly minted adoring fans at Ladyfest SF—and their worst—"For the Five Dudes Posse," says LaDawn—back home in SoCal not 18 hours later. But they've also put out their first label-backed release—the split with Radio Vago on Dionysus—and are working on an EP (recorded by no less than Radio from dyke-punk big-noise band the Need). They're supposed to play England and Australia—hey, all anyone had to do was ask. Don't get it wrong, warns LaDawn—they love where they live. But they also love what's on the outside, too.

"To get a reaction from people who don't know someone you know, who didn't go to school with someone, who never even heard of you—they just happened to be there, saw you, and were like, 'Damn!'" says LaDawn. "There's no history attached, no strings. Just what you see is what you get, and they liked it. It feels good."